EU and North African Migrants: Health and Health Systems

The coordinates of human health are complex even in a single population but they are even more complex in migrants whose life situation is always influenced by the host country and the country of origin. Some migrants may experience several host countries and some return to the country of origin. Thus it is important to survey well being, health status, disease panorama and use of health services of immigrants compared to the native population; such analyses would be incomplete without casting a view on the same indicators and parameters in the country of origin. Thus for this project we have collected a team of experts to cover health aspects of the full cycle of migration, viewing the health situation in Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria as representatives of the Mediterranean North African (NA) partner countries, the origins of vast numbers of immigrants in EU.

The EU partner countries from France, Italy, Germany (subcontracting Slovenia) and Sweden are not only receivers of the NA immigrants but they also have larger numbers of immigrants from others areas, allowing comparisons between immigrant groups. The team has experience on a variety of health and disease measures and it has an access to a variety of survey and register material relating to population health, disease patterns and function of health care systems.

Many of the surveys and diseases registers have been carried out/constructed by the present partners who thus possess unique sources of data. The team will be in the position to respond to the expectations of the call by reviewing health effects of migration from the country of origin to the host country and coming up with scientifically valid state-of-the-art evaluations and appropriate recommendations for scientific and health policy measures in improving the conditions for the EU immigrants.